The picks, week 11 (and no cheating)

Thursday football. Unless there's a turkey the size of a Kindergartner waiting to be devoured afterward, it just doesn't seem right.

I won't be heading up to the Runway until around 3:30 p.m. (got to get a jump on that Veteran's Day traffic) and since I have nothing else to do this morning, might as well blog like it's 2006.

First off, I was pretty excited to see a Connecticut newspaper finally refer to Rentschler Field as "The Runway" in print. Fine, it was the newspaper I work for (and I didn't write the headline myself. Didn't even suggest it. Honest). But I loved it. "Pitt expects Runway to be roaring". That sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? "The Runway". Makes you think of a loud, exciting, high-energy stadium (even if that's not necessarily true sometimes); a place people want to be. "The Rent" makes me think of a financial obligation...like, how much is this going to cost me? Maybe that's what's keeping people away.

ANYWAY. Big flap over D.J. Hernandez and the case of the lost arm band. Sounds like a Hardy Boys' book. Is it national news? Probably not. But it did spark interesting debate over ethics and what constitutes cheating. I won't bore you any more than you already are by getting into it. Besides, I believe there was an episode of "The Brady Bunch" that covered this lesson in a similar fashion. Let's just leave it at this: you don't take things that don't belong to you. It's as simple as that.

But I will bore you with a story from my youth, a funny tale my old high school buddies talk about from time to time. I was 15 and playing in the town Babe Ruth Baseball League. My team was playing our bitter rival for the championship. It had rained all night and was still drizzling that morning, so there was some question as to whether the game would be postponed. They decided we could play. But it was such a dreary day, coaches had to phone the players individually to let them know the game was on and make sure they were coming.

About 20 minutes before the first pitch, the guys on our team noticed the two worst players on the other team (who happened to be brothers) weren't there. League rules were that everyone had to play at least two innings, and these guys were both athletic disasters. Think Timmy Lupus, the "booger-eating spaz" from The Bad News Bears. Only there were two of them.

Fishy. Very fishy. It didn't take long for a couple of kids in the league not playing that day to wander over to our bench and tell us they heard our opponents had called the brothers and informed them the game was cancelled. Of course, we automatically assumed it was the truth. And we weren't going to let them get away with that. So one of our players sneaked away ever so carefully to a pay phone (remember those?), called the brothers and let them know the game was still on.

As it turned out, the opposing team didn't tell the brothers the game was cancelled. They just never called at all and prayed that the pair wouldn't show. Cheating? Not exactly. Unethical? Most likely. Even our team walked the ethical fence with our sneaky maneuver. And I know the circumstances are a little different from the D.J. case. To be honest, I just felt like writing this story.

By the way, the best part of the tale was the reaction of the opposing team when the brothers came pedalling into the baseball complex on their 10-speed bikes two minutes before the first pitch. After all, the guys on the other team thought they were in the clear and this burden to their squad wouldn't show. One of my very good friends, The Piper, was on the other team. He swears to this day he saw the brothers dramatically appear through a cloud of heavy mist at the park entrance (kind of like how the UConn football team emerges from the smoke at the Runway tunnel before every home game). We definitely heard our friend Rags scream "Nooooooooooooooooo!" And when one of the coaches asked "what's wrong?", he responded in a whiny shrill, "they're heeeeeere!"

Priceless. And yes, we won.

On to the picks.

Game 1: WEST VIRGINIA (-6) over Cincinnati

Game 2: Syracuse (-3) over RUTGERS

Game 3: South Carolina (+6.5) over FLORIDA

Game 4: Utah (-6) over NOTRE DAME

Game 5: AUBURN (-8.5) over Georgia

Game 6: OHIO STATE (-18) over Penn State

Game 7: Virginia Tech (-3.5) over NORTH CAROLINA

Game 8: ALABAMA (-13) over Mississippi State

Game 9: NORTHWESTERN (+10) over Iowa

Game 10: Texas Tech (+14.5) over OKLAHOMA

Game 11: Kansas State (+12.5) over MISSOURI

Game 12: Texas A&M (-3) over BAYLOR

Game 13: LOUISVILLE (-3) over South Florida

Game 14: Southern California (+4) over ARIZONA

Game 15: Nevada (-8.5) over FRESNO STATE

Game 16: YALE (-14) over Princeton

Not enough time to get the UConn-Pitt game into the picks. But, with the current line at UConn +5.5, I think I'd take the Huskies.